TWL Season 24 Rules & League Changes

[Dwopple]

We're exactly 1 MONTH away from TWL squad qualifications closing. TWD activity has been absolutely popping lately (60 TWD matches played from Friday & Saturday alone, so far). We've continued to see some old veteran faces pop-in, and the TWL HYPE TRAIN is in full choo-choo mode.

Vys and I have been discussing a few changes to league, and have updated the TWL Rules for Season 24 [RIP KOBE].

Below is a quick summary of significant changes, but first I want to point out these rules are still subject to change based on community feedback or new ideas.

Section 6 - Scheduling Rules and Procedures regarding TWL Divisional Match Ordering

All three divisions will start at a specific time during the regular season and playoffs. If games from earlier divisions run over the allotted time, subsequent divisional matches will start once all previous divisional matches have finished.

Regular Season - Best of 1

TWLJ matches will be played at 2:00 PM and 2:30 PM EDT/EST.
TWLB matches will be played at 3:00 PM and 3:30 PM EDT/EST.
TWLD matches will be played at 4:00 PM and 4:30 PM EDT/EST.

Playoff Rounds - Best of 3

TWLJ rounds will start at 2:00 PM EDT/EST.
TWLB rounds will start at 3:00 PM EDT/EST.
TWLD rounds will start at 4:30 PM EDT/EST.

YES- you've read that right... JAVELIN matches will be played first, followed by Basing, then Warbirds. We looked at average times for each division, and basing was (obviously) by far the longest of the 3. Moving base matches second should help cut down on some of the extra late-nights our European community have long endured. We have decided against flexible scheduling between squads & captains, for now.

Section 1.01 Roster Requirements

Added the following rule change: If a squad is removed from a TWL Division for a Class 2 Team Offense, the squad’s TWL Roster limits will be reduced in accordance with the above outlined roster limits. TWL Ops will have the final say on players impacted by the roster limit reduction.

Section 1.02 - Gameplay Qualification Requirements

This has been communicated already in our TWL 24 Announcement thread, but TWL invitations are no longer tied to TWD ladder ranking, and are instead dependent on meeting the minimum games played (5) while playing a minimum amount of rostered players (3 members for 5v5 DD/JD, and 5 members for 8v8 BD).

Section 2 - TWL Invitations

This currently states TWLD / TWLJ will allow at least 8 squads, and TWLB will allow at least 6 squads. This is still subject to change depending on the number of squads wishing to compete in each division, and will be finalized closer to the end of the qualifying period.

Section 4.03 - Replacement Squads

I've changed this to be a League Op decision on replacement squads, vs auto-inviting the highest non-TWL squad within each division.

Section 4.05 - Hard Lock

This is unchanged, but wanted to make everyone aware all TWL rosters will experience a hard lock after the last Week 3 match. 8.5.7

[ogron]

what the fuck?

change basing back to 4pm, where it's been forever. what kind of bullshit is this?

there have been repeated polls many times showing massive support for basing last, stop making weird unilateral decisions that favor your team, you literally changed the entire fucking structure because Mikkiz works on Mondays to get a terr?

LOOOOOL

[apt]

feel like basing is the most spiritually exhausting game, wouldn't it make sense to host later as oggie said

[Dreamwin]

Quite dumb to announce some theory in your head as a truth claus. Such classic behaviour... I dont know the reasoning behind this but would strongly suggest moving basing back to last position. There are multiple logical reasons for this but one is simply to avoid forfeits which are gonna happen if basing is the first division.

[Dwopple]

what the fuck?

change basing back to 4pm, where it's been forever. what kind of bullshit is this?

there have been repeated polls many times showing massive support for basing last, stop making weird unilateral decisions that favor your team, you literally changed the entire fucking structure because Mikkiz works on Mondays to get a terr?

LOOOOOL

Ooohf. I can see you are upset you weren't consulted with this change. I'm slightly stunned at your accusation... you may have a hard time believing this, but Vys and I discuss zero TWL rule changes with our squad, nor was anyone's circumstances (squadmate, or not) factored into this decision. Just wow.

Let's keep the discussion on this change productive, and like I mentioned in my post...

I want to point out these rules are still subject to change based on community feedback or new ideas.

[ogron]

if my assumption is wrong, i apologize, but either way it's poorly thought out and should be changed back, regardless of intent.

[afghan]

I agree I’m not a fan of the earlier basing time and like ogron said there have been polls for this. Rather than complaining for complaining sake here is my alternative solution:

TWLD - 2:00pm with 2nd round immediately after
TWLJ - 2:45pm with 2nd round immediately after
TWLB - 3:30pm with 2nd round immediately after

This gives an extra 30min off the end time. Looking at the times from last season, the longest games in wb and jav were 15min and that was for the close matches otherwise they were shorter. This removes the arbitrary gap of scheduling games every 30 minutes as most people just linger around waiting. Another way to decrease the end time is to decrease the time it takes to set lineups.

[zidane]

I would prefer base last also, if this is a vote or something

[Dwopple]

if my assumption is wrong, i apologize, but either way it's poorly thought out and should be changed back, regardless of intent.

+1 for your feedback.

This idea was floated based on general feedback from the Euro community over the years playing late nights when basing matches 1) go the full 7-8 minutes of lineup management, and 2) basing matches factually being the longest of all divisions.

I asked BIET (THANK YOU!) to provide me with some stats on the length of matches in each division across all leagues... here is what this looks like:

Total and average times per league, per division, per round (this includes setup time):

• TWDD: 20968021 seconds in 30567 rounds. ~686 seconds per round (11m 26s).
• TWJD: 26497605 seconds in 32127 rounds. ~825 seconds per round (13m 45s).
• TWBD: 9863668s seconds in 6039 rounds. ~1633 seconds per round (27m 13s).

• TWDTD: 312860 seconds in 372 rounds. ~841 seconds per round (14m 01s).
• TWDTJ: 305648 seconds in 358 rounds. ~854 seconds per round (14m 14s).
• TWDTB: 480814 seconds in 342 rounds. ~1406 seconds per round (23m 26s).

• TWLD: 48685 seconds in .. rounds. ~761 seconds per round (12m 41s).
• TWLJ: 38951 seconds in .. rounds. ~721 seconds per round (12m 01s).
• TWLB: 49769 seconds in .. rounds. ~1382 seconds per round (23m 02s).

The logic behind this change was as follows...

Moving LB to the first division played allowed for the statistically longer matches to be played first, with LJ starting immediately after the final LB matches finished if they were to (more than likely) run over the allotted time. The statistically shorter LJ and LD matches would then balance out any long LB matches, cut down on the waiting between divisions, and give everyone about 30 minutes of their Sunday evening / Monday mornings back.

I fully realize this is a major change compared to what we've literally done for a decade+ now, but that's exactly why I've given everyone weeks to productively discuss it here. It's subject to change.

[apt]

ok i can always get behind data analytics.

[a2m+]

Selfishly I would like TWLB earlier rather than later, but I haven’t played TWL in 7 years and I realize my family situation is different than most that play this game competitively. Maybe a compromise could be to play jav at 2 pm, base at 3 pm and wb at 4 pm like the order that the majority of the games were scheduled back 7-8 years ago in TWL when teams were allowed to negotiate times?

[Vehicle]

I understand it might get confusing but I think we should do wb->jav->base then base->jav->wb, rinse and repeat. I think javs has the most overlap of players from other divisions and with roster caps at 13 for 3-league squads there has to be some overlap anyways.

[Mikki<]

what the fuck?

change basing back to 4pm, where it's been forever. what kind of bullshit is this?

there have been repeated polls many times showing massive support for basing last, stop making weird unilateral decisions that favor your team, you literally changed the entire fucking structure because Mikkiz works on Mondays to get a terr?

LOOOOOL

Classic Oggie! Dunno where you got that but I was thinking that I would not play at all because of last TWL season and just kinda bored of this game. Only times I logged in was sundays to play the draft tourny and TWD activity throughout the season was close to zero.

I voted in the other thread that it should be LJ / LB / LD so we could avoid some forfeits in basing and leave LD last since I feel like most euros do not care about warbird (I think?) and NA players do. Also I suggested to play only 3 games per sunday but I guess that would make the season longer and hurt the zone activity. Could we just play less games then? :P

[afghan]

I asked BIET (THANK YOU!) to provide me with some stats on the length of matches in each division across all leagues... here is what this looks like:

Total and average times per league, per division, per round (this includes setup time):

• TWDD: 20968021 seconds in 30567 rounds. ~686 seconds per round (11m 26s).
• TWJD: 26497605 seconds in 32127 rounds. ~825 seconds per round (13m 45s).
• TWBD: 9863668s seconds in 6039 rounds. ~1633 seconds per round (27m 13s).

• TWDTD: 312860 seconds in 372 rounds. ~841 seconds per round (14m 01s).
• TWDTJ: 305648 seconds in 358 rounds. ~854 seconds per round (14m 14s).
• TWDTB: 480814 seconds in 342 rounds. ~1406 seconds per round (23m 26s).

• TWLD: 48685 seconds in .. rounds. ~761 seconds per round (12m 41s).
• TWLJ: 38951 seconds in .. rounds. ~721 seconds per round (12m 01s).
• TWLB: 49769 seconds in .. rounds. ~1382 seconds per round (23m 02s).

I

what about my solution? According to the stats there is <30 min of play time in one division with an hour slot. I understand people need breaks for snacks, bathroom, lineups, etc but do we really need 30 minutes of break to play <30 minutes of the game? I think my solution offers a reasonable compromise.

[Majorcrisis2]

what the fuck?

change basing back to 4pm, where it's been forever. what kind of bullshit is this?

there have been repeated polls many times showing massive support for basing last, stop making weird unilateral decisions that favor your team, you literally changed the entire fucking structure because Mikkiz works on Mondays to get a terr?

LOOOOOL

Its been on 5 pm forever... But yea basing as first on 2 pm is kinda weird. In history when squads scheduled the games, it basically went jav-base-wb. I like that the most, but that's my opinion.